If you have an individual subscription to MIT Press Scholarship Online, you will be requested to enter your username and password when attempting to access the full text of a chapter. You can also log on at any time by clicking the Log In button on the bottom navigation bar.

Your password is case-sensitive.

If you are a librarian and have problems logging in or have forgotten your password, please consult Subscriber Services.

If you are logging in to MITSO from an institution which has a subscription, or if your institution uses a referring URL system, you should see full text of the chapters automatically. If you do not get access, please consult your system administrator or librarian.

If your institution uses Eduserv’s Athens service or Shibboleth, simply click on either of the labeled Log In links on the login overlay to reach your Athens or Shibboleth login area.

Some libraries allow remote access to websites to which they subscribe. Your librarian can tell you if that option is available to you.

If your library does allow remote access, enter your library card number in the Library Card field on the login overlay. If you encounter difficulties entering the site using your library card number, please consult your librarian.

To log out, click the Log Out button on the bottom navigation bar. If you are accessing MITSO via your institution, you do not need to log out.

Navigation bars

The top navigation bar allows you to return quickly to the site homepage at any time by clicking the site logo. The search (magnifying glass) icon is expanded by default on the site homepage: on other pages, tapping the search icon reveals the search box.

The bottom navigation bar contains a link to this Help text via the Help (question mark) button, a Full Site button that takes users to the desktop view of the product, and a Log In/Log Out button (depending on whether a user is authenticated).

The top and bottom navigation bars are fixed to the viewport on iOS devices, and scroll off the page on Android devices.

Home page

To look up a term, type it into the Search box and click the magnifying glass icon, or press Enter.

The Browse control takes you to a page where you can browse the contents of the site by subject.

Searching

The search (magnifying glass) icon is expanded by default on the site homepage: on other pages, tapping the search icon reveals the search box.

To run a search, type or paste the key term you want to find in the Search box. When the results of your search are displayed, click on any of the books listed to open it.

To restrict your search to the site that you are currently on, select the ‘MIT Scholarship Online’ radio button. To search across all University Press Scholarship Online content, select the ‘All University Presses’ radio button.

A search finds titles, authors, keywords, book abstracts, and chapter abstracts. To search the full text of the books on the site, tap to change the tab on the search results page from ‘Chapters’ to ‘Books’.

You can make your search more complex by using the wildcards * and ?. Wildcards are useful if you want to search for several terms with the same root or if you don't know exactly how your term is spelled.

The number of results is displayed in the Book/Chapter tabs on the search results page. To view more results, click the ‘Show 10 More’ button at the foot of the search results page. This will load the next set of results below those currently displayed.

Padlocked books are unavailable under your existing subscription. However, you will be able to view the table of contents and abstracts of locked books.

Browsing

To browse books, click on the Browse option on the Homepage. An alphabetical list of books available on the site is displayed. To view chapter-level results, click on the ‘Chapters’ tab.

The number of results is displayed in the Book/Chapter tabs on the browse results page. To view more results, click the ‘Show 10 More’ button at the foot of the browse results page. This will load the next set of results below those currently displayed.

You can narrow down the list using the filter options, invoked by clicking the Filters button. A spot to the right on the button is highlighted if filters have been applied to the results list being displayed.

Tapping a term selects that terms as a filter, and drills down to the next level of the hierarchy, e.g. Biology > Aquatic Biology.

The View # Results button takes users to the results page with their selected filter(s) applied.

The Reset button clears all filters and returns the user to an unfiltered results page.

The structure of a book

The book title, author(s) or editor(s), bibliographic information, and abstract are at the top of the page, with the book Table of Contents below. Click on a line in the Table of Contents to open front matter, chapters, or end matter.

Use the ‘Google Preview’ link to look up your title in Google Books.

The Chapter page

The chapter title, book title (source), author(s) or editor(s), publisher and other bibliographic information are at the top of the page, with the chapter Abstract and Keywords below.

If you are not an authenticated user, it will be necessary to log in (see above) to see the full chapter text.